The Atlanta Cosplay Meetup has been making a ton of progress on our Marines & Xenos group costume. We have finished up build day #6 so let's take a look and see where things are at currently!

We've finished principal construction of the Marine torso armor and are working on finishing it currently. The cardboard masters were coated in fiberglass resin to give them strength, and we are going over them with bondo body filler to smooth them out. After a few more passes they should be smooth enough to use as vacuumforming masters, or to mold and cast in resin and fiberglass mat for strength.

We've also started building the leg armor, using the same method as the torso.

All that is left for the Marine armor is to 3D print the shoulder parts, and the helmet and various attachments. Adam purchased the same WWII helmet used in the film, which will become the base for our helmet that we will make out of cast resin and fiberglass mat.

The Pulse Rifle has been assembled and had a first pass of smoothing and cleanup done on it. The entire gun was 3D printed from a high detail model from the game Aliens: Colonial Marines. Another day or so of work and we'll be ready to mold it in silicone!

Adam Keeton lent a hand helping us lathe a test Grenade out of aluminum. This is only a first iteration, we'll need to make a few adjustments and go back and try again. So far the results are very nice looking though!

Plus, he looks like a natural holding the Pulse Rifle.

The Xeno skull has been started. We built the head using a 3D model from the game Aliens: Colonial Marines and a program called 123D Make. What this program can do is generate a 3D interlocking puzzle, sort of
like the wooden dinosaur skeleton puzzles you got as a kid. We can set
it to be however many vertical and horizontal slices and the program
draws up plans, which we then exported to the laser cutter. 4 hours of
cutting and about 60 pieces later, you get this mess.

Assembly really is a simple as finding the numbered slots and sliding
them together. Once you get the first couple of pieces put together the
assembly is a breeze. We took maybe an hour to put the whole thing
together. Once it was assembled, we coated the whole thing in fiberglass
resin to give it strength, and once that cured we filled all of the
holes with expanding foam.

Once the foam cures, we will rasp all of the excess off and skin it in bondo, and use that for our sculpting base.

Valentin is working on the mechanism for the Xeno tongue. We are 3D
designing and printing a rack and pinion gear under tension from a
rubber band, and "cocked" with a worm gear connected to a motor. The
idea is that the Xeno costumers will have a hidden button to open the
mouth and shoot out the tongue via pressure from the band, and the worm
gear will retract and cock the tongue to be shot out again.

Lastly, I started on the Smartgun for my own Marine costume. Every Colonial Marine group needs a Smartgunner, and I would be lying if I didn't say that Vasquez was a bit of a hero as a kid. The Smartgun and the steadicam arm will be built much the way the rest of the build has been, with several 3D printed parts and laser cut cardboard details. The steadicam arm will have a semi-working interior using custom machined aluminum parts and springs. So far the barrel has been cut and printed, with a few more parts on the way.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to our deadline in May!